New episodes of the Naruto anime series are aired once a week in Japan, on the channel TV Tokyo. In the United States, the Naruto anime series had been airing on Cartoon Network since 2005, however in 2009, Cartoon Network cancelled the show for unknown reasons. On September 10th, 2009 - Viz Media announced that the Naruto Shippuden series had been acquired by Disney and that it would make it's debut in October on the Disney XD channel.

Naruto filler episodes are not a part of the original storyline which featured in the manga series. The main purpose of fillers is to maintain a healthy gap between the anime and manga, this allows the manga artist more time to create storylines before they are adapted into the anime series.